Congrats to SCRA Student Travel Award Winners

We had a very competitive pool of 36 applicants for the 2011 Biennial Student Travel Awards! As you may recall, in 2010 the SCRA Executive Committee voted to double the number of student travel awards dispersed across the Biennial, Regional Eco Meetings, and APA. Although there were originally only 8 awards specified for the Biennial, the national student representatives, Todd Bottom of DePaul University, and Lindsey Zimmerman of Georgia State University, shifted 4 awards away from APA and Eco in order to provide 12 total travel awards for the Biennial. This was a carefully considered decision, but we felt that it made sense to meet better meet the much greater demand for Biennial student travel awards. This decision allowed us to fund the competitive top 33% of applications we received while also retaining travel awards for APA and Eco.

The award application review included a CV, and a 300-word statement including a description of the student's conference presentation topic(s) and its relevance to SCRA and community psychology, as well as the cost of tickets, distance traveled, description of financial need, and goals in attending the conference. It is also important to note that all of the winners' membership in SCRA was up-to-date. Finally, it is very exciting to report that ALL of the 2011 SCRA student travel award winners are both first author on at least one presentation and are also authors on more than one presentation. Congratulations go to the following students who each received the $300 award:

Ashley Boal - Portland State University

Agostino Carbone - University of Federico II - Naples, Italy

Victoria Chien - University of South Carolina

Laura Kati Corlew - University of Hawai`i, Manoa

Jesica Fernandez - University of California, Santa Cruz

Mary Gray - Portland State University

Sharon Hakim - Wichita State University

Dawn Henderson - North Carolina State University

Chris Kirk - Wichita State University

Danielle Kohfeldt - University of California, Santa Cruz

Melissa Stompolis - The University of North Carolina - Charlotte

Kaleigh Vance - Portland State University